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Successful refund of airline's Mexican tourist tax


phxfunguy

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It would appear that US Airways finally has an efficient method in place to refund the tourist tax to residente temporal and permanente holders. I recently flew from Phoenix to Guad, sent in my info a few days after arrival home, and had my refund posted on my credit card 5 days later. The last time I requested this refund last fall, it took them five months to respond to my email and then I had the refund within the week. One can only hope that when the "New American" totally eliminates all vestiges of US Airways that they will have a similarly rapid process to offer. They want your ticket number, not the record locator, and I assumed some evidence of your immigration status, although they did not spell that out. I sent an attachment of my passport and the front and back of my residente permanente card which worked. You send it to refunds (at) usairways.com. They will also refund the tax for earlier flights if you still have the ticket numbers and your card was valid then. I don't know how far they will let you go back.

I have not tried this exercise on any other carriers yet but maybe others can post their experience. I would try refunds (at) aa.com for American and think it might work the same. Friends tried to get refunds from Volaris and were given the run around clearly designed to discourage them as no one seemed to know how to do it...call the 800 number, go to the gate agent, call customer service, go to the service desk, call the 800 number, etc. Finally they demanded the service desk agent take care of it as that seemed to be what the phone people were saying had to be done. She was harried checking in a flight all by herself in Las Vegas and said she'd take them in back to the office to do it when the flight was loaded, they should go and stand at the end of the line, but they were on that flight and time was getting tight so gave up trying.

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When I fly Volaris, in booking the ticket I say I am Mexican (I was told to do this by someone at Volaris). This way the tourist tax does not get added to the ticket price. Never had any trouble with not being Mexican when the time came to fly.

Good to know, I'll pass that on to my friends who use Volaris frequently. I had thought about doing that too but didn't know if the US passport info would then cause a conflict. When I go to Phoenix sometimes they are $200-300 cheaper than AA on a round trip, yet I've found one way trips for $125 on AA even at the last minute and it's $325 on Volaris!

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Tourism tax is applied only on flights into Mexico, not exiting.

So if you book a RT ticket, it's included in the total tax but to get the refund you have to give them the ticket number for the return to Mexico portion only (if there's a difference in the numbers of the two segments.) If the price stays the same when you go to book, you can book the two tickets separately at the same time and that may make getting the refund simpler. I know US Airways claimed no tourist tax was charged on three RT flights I submitted to them at one time after the fact and of course it was, but they refused to refund it. They did refund the tax when the flight was one way however.

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The tourism tax will be added to the NOB-Mexico portion of a return ticket originating in Mexico, or on a one-way flying into Mexico. It is nice that some airlines have forms to fill out and re-imburse you- as I previously posted on another thread, Westjet will only deduct the tax at time of booking, which means you have to call them to book your ticket (find the one you want online first, reserve it for 24 hrs, then call before you pay and do your booking by phone.).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just tried to get a refund from Delta. After talking to agents at the number for Skymiles members who claimed there was no such thing, I finally got one who told me that the tax was about $21 but that it was not charged on yesterday's flight because I booked from the Delta Mexico website. I don't think I was on their Mexico website, and the page I printed off just says delta.com, but they probably recognized that my computer was in Mexico since I do not use anything to hide my location. I thought that was rather interesting.

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